The action classic Die Hard (1988), directed by John McTiernan and starring Bruce Willis, is a movie far better than it has any right to be. It’s so well crafted that it can essentially function as a textbook for how to pull off onscreen action entertainment, even though it never pretends to be anything more than a genre flick. So in this piece, I’ll pick apart Die Hard to find out what makes for old-fashioned, pure movie fun.
In short, the secret to Die Hard’s success is character development. Everyone knows that character is crucial to a good screenplay, but few invest in it as heavily as McTiernan and screenwriter Jeb Stuart in this film, and few are as savvy in their execution.
The first character developed, of course, is John McClane (Willis), and like many action heroes, he’s a rough-around-the edges tough guy with a turbulent family life. But Die Hard adds uncommon nuance to his exposition. Within minutes of watching John and his wife, Holly, we learn that John is not some inscrutable rage-machine, as his many predecessors and copycats tend to be, but rather a man in a truly complicated situation: she moved away from him for a job opportunity, but his attachment to his work as a NYC cop combined with his innate stubbornness made moving West a bitter proposition. And not only does he want his woman back, as is standard fare for a troubled action hero, but she wants him back, too: the maid knows to make John’s bed in the guest room without needing to be asked, just in case he shows up for Christmas.
Later in the film, an emotional scene takes place wherein an injured John radios his friend to ask that a message be relayed to his wife if he dies: that he wishes he had been more supportive, and that although he said “I love you” many times, he never said what was needed: that he was sorry. This only packs such a punch because we already know that the situation between the two was complicated and understandably difficult for John, even if he was ultimately in the wrong. The audience can relate.
Perhaps other directors have trouble pulling off this level of nuance because it requires creativity to squeeze in so much of it before audiences get impatient for the excitement to start. Die Hard rises to the occasion in this regard. One example of effective, rapid exposition is the aforementioned conversation between Holly and Paulina, the maid. Another is the clever screenwriting device of Argyle (De’voreaux White), the nosy limo driver who teases out key information. A third great idea is the character of Harry Ellis (Hart Bochner), a goofy would-be suitor whom Holly rejects, John snaps at, and Holly dismisses to John as having no chance with her—all within the early minutes of the movie.
Merely through Ellis’ presence, then, we learn that Holly a) prefers John to a fresh start, b) isn’t the type of woman to intentionally inspire jealousy in John despite resenting him, and c) is comfortable talking frankly with John in a husband-wife manner. We also learn that John is still very protective of his wife despite having resisted moving with her to the West coast.
These revelations mean that when John and Holly reunite, we’re rooting for both of them. This is actually a rarity, because, sadly, the woman in these situations is often portrayed in a negative light throughout the film to bolster the plight of the protagonist. After all, if she’s short tempered, demanding, and disloyal, then the hero seems more justified—so we like him more, right? Eh, maybe, but we also can’t understand why he wants her back in the first place, so their reunification doesn’t make us happy. Another unfortunate cliché (potentially derived from High Noon (1952)) is to have the hero’s love interest suddenly become a badass toward the end of the film and start whooping bad guys herself—maybe even finishing off the main villain—to show that she’s had a change of heart toward the hero. Since Holly is already likable, that isn’t needed in Die Hard.
The positive portrayal of Holly also means that John doesn’t “get the girl” through his action heroics: instead, he had her from the start. The only alteration comes from John himself, who, faced with the probability of death, realizes the wrongness of his stubborn ways and vows to change if he gets the chance. Thus, there’s a true arc for the main character, a fundamental requirement of enjoying a movie that’s nevertheless often neglected by action films, most of which prefer to make their heroes so skilled in killing people that their love interests simply can’t resist them, surely a male fantasy rather than a depiction of reality.
Not only is the character development in Die Hard nuanced; it’s unorthodox. Surprisingly late in the movie, we meet Sergeant Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson), the main supporting character. Because he arrives in the thick of the action, his exposition is shallower and his arc is less detailed. But that arc is memorable all the same, completed when he guns down a thought-dead villain at the finale. It would have been easy to write Powell as merely a helpful, supportive guy, and leave it at that. Die Hard goes the extra mile, even supplying Powell with a meddling chief to emphasize his acumen in the field and his loyalty to John.
Now to the villains, which is where things go from great to masterful. Everyone remembers Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), but why?
Well, for starters, Hans is very good at what he does. His plan is meticulous, and he deals with setbacks calmly and effectively. His deliberate style also provides a clear contrast to John, who is forced to improvise his way through events, and who is often visibly upset when things don’t go his way or gleeful when they do. To be sure, Hans does encounter unexpected challenges, but he responds not with instinct and guts, as John does, but by quickly creating new, clever plans, such as feigning an American accent when cornered and shooting glass to injure John’s bare feet. This stylistic difference is reinforced in the script by the two characters’ opposing valuations of cowboy heroes like Roy Rogers: Hans perceives these figures as implausible products of a dumbed-down American commercialism, while John sees them as valid inspirations for his career in law enforcement and his efforts to take down the terrorists.
But sneakily, Hans is also similar to John in a fundamental way. This becomes clear in a late scene when Holly accuses Hans of being nothing more than a “common crook.” Hans reacts to this by becoming truly angry for the only time in the film, wrenching Holly toward himself and correcting the record: “I am an exceptional crook.”
Perhaps the money, then, is only a secondary motivation for Hans: what truly propels him is outsized personal pride, the very flaw that Holly accuses John of allowing to destroy their marriage. We could imagine a similar exchange taking place between John and Holly before their separation. But whereas John, the hero, eventually sees the error of his ways (“Tell her I’m sorry”), Hans, the villain, never does—taunting John at the movie’s climax instead of shooting immediately, his only major mistake throughout. And when Hans finds himself hanging out a 30th story window with his plot certainly thwarted for good, he doesn’t scramble for safety; rather, he pulls a gun at the pair that wounded his ego.
Hans is also charismatic and likable, which adds to his villainous appeal. It’s tricky to make a villain likable, but again, Die Hard rises to the occasion. As before, the character of Ellis facilitates development, as he returns to misguidedly barter with Hans and winds up dead. I’ll admit that this is probably the worst scene in the movie, because Ellis is really too stupid to be believable, but by being so unlikeable he forces us to root for Hans, who responds to the insufferable interlocutor with appropriate sarcasm. We want him to kill Ellis, and he does. And when arrogant FBI officers take over and ignore Powell’s pleading for caution, we want them to pay a price, and Hans again obliges us, giving the order to obliterate their forces with bazookas.
The top-notch villainy extends beyond Hans, though. The rest of his team is memorable, too. Like Sergeant Powell, these are characters that would have received little to no development in a standard action movie, but McTiernan manages to give most of them recognizable personalities, sometimes with only one scene to work with. Theo (Clarence Gilyard), the tech specialist, is a jackass and relishes it: a malicious version of the equally exuberant Argyle, who fittingly takes him out later on. Karl (Alexander Godunov) is the strongest and most ruthless of the gang, but he’s not a mindless brute in the fashion of James Bond henchmen; rather, he’s angrily avenging the loss of his brother, the first of the crew killed, who is briefly shown to be the more cerebral and cautious of the two brothers.
I also appreciated the scene in which Powell first arrives to investigate and is met by Eddie (Dennis Hayden), a member of Hans’ team responsible for manning the security desk. In a lesser film, this would have been Hans himself, to increase his airtime and emphasize his cleverness. But the fact that Eddie is so effective in his job—nonchalantly watching football and making small talk with Powell—increases our appreciation for Hans much more than an appearance from Hans himself would have done. As the leader, he has chosen a skilled team and delegated with purpose.
As I near the end of examining an action movie, I can’t neglect to discuss the action. The strange thing is, there isn’t all that much of it in Die Hard. There are a few short confrontations in which John kills Hans’ crewmembers, and one extended fight scene between John and Karl. These scenes are fine. I think what I most appreciate about them is that they don’t try to reach some unattainable degree of coolness with characters pulling off impossible moves and demonstrating superhuman strength. Instead, they are what they are: human fight scenes, won by John. Since we’re rooting for John (and we kind of like the villains too), this suffices. In our current post-Matrix movie landscape, this approach is rarely seen.
Also noticeable in 2020 is the lack of stunts. To be fair, there are a few, but by modern standards they’re not awe-inspiring. John’s leap from an exploding roof and subsequent reentry through a window is certainly a true stunt sequence, and again, this scene is fine. It’s not Mission: Impossible-level cool. The emphasis on John’s bloody feet increases the tension, reminding us that this is not an invincible hero, but mostly, the effectiveness comes from our concern for John. While I was watching Die Hard, I actually found myself wondering whether stunts in movies tend to decrease the overall tension, by building it up unsustainably high and then releasing it. Since Die Hard has so few stunts, there are few releases; thus, the tension remains high throughout.
John McTiernan had previously directed Predator (1987), which is also a good action movie but has noticeable weaknesses compared to Die Hard. Both feature highly successful character exposition and focus on cat-and-mouse tension rather than stunts and combat scenes. But Predator’s hero is a hulking Arnold Schwarzenegger, a casting choice surely influenced by producers with the aim of emulating Sylvester Stallone’s then-popular Rambo franchise—so laughably macho in retrospect that it’s now the stuff of easy parody.
Schwarzenegger’s presence severely limits what can be done with the script, and the result is a kind of “in-between” action hero: McTiernan seems to have envisioned a relatable everyman for the role, but a snarling Austrian bodybuilder can only be so unassuming. Both Stallone and Schwarzenegger turned down the role of John McClane, thank God, allowing McTiernan’s talents to be fully realized, as little-known Bruce Willis was given the opportunity to play the lead in a chatty, emotional manner that the 80’s had heretofore avoided.
Why haven’t we had an action movie equal to Die Hard since its release in 1988? As I indicated, it seems to me that during the 90’s, special effects breakthroughs in movies like Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and The Matrix (1999) raised the bar so high for the action sequences themselves that attention to character development was diminished, with producers fearful of boring audiences with comparatively tame set pieces and accordingly funneling their efforts in that direction. Today’s popular action franchises, like the juggernaut Fast and Furious movies, have shrugged off not only character development but also all notions of remote seriousness, instead pouring dollars into visually amazing stunt sequences.
Despite this, I think there’s still a market for a movie like Die Hard. After all, it’s still massively popular: doesn’t that indicate that action audiences haven’t lost the taste for a well-written script? We’ll see what the next decade of moviemaking brings. For now, I recommend a re-watch of this classic, a master class in movie craftsmanship.
— Jim Andersen
For more on blockbuster hits, check out my criticism of Avatar.
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